From a male member of the EA Bay Area / DC communities on his experience with polyamory:
I used to be monogamous. I started dating someone who is ‘poly by orientation’ but I was dubious about it—in particular I didn’t know how well I would handle poly. As we started feeling more serious about each other as partners, we had a relationship-defining talk where we agreed to start off monogamous together. We felt that this gave the relationship the best chance of success—partly due to my uncertainty about poly and partly other reasons which pushed in that direction.
We agreed to be monogamous for at least 6 months and then reevaluate it then. In the meantime, I read up on poly. I liked Polysecure, and I also got a lot from the blog Polyamory School ([e.g., this post and others linked there]) After a bunch of reading as well as talking to my partner, I felt more excited about becoming poly myself: I felt like it would help me by giving me more social opportunities, expanding my comfort zone, improving my communication skills and becoming less dependent on my partner for social success. So when that 6-month deadline rolled around, I felt ready to dip my toe in.
We decided to opt for a quite autonomous version of hierarchical poly, meaning that we acknowledge each other as primaries and date independently, and are very transparent about our dating lives with each other. My partner doesn’t have a ‘veto’ on anyone I want to date, although if there was someone who it would make her sad that I dated, she gets to express those feelings and it is usually a good idea for me to pay attention to that. And if I started dating someone else who I thought had potential to become primary we would certainly have a conversation about it before I got too far into that other relationship.
So far (~ 8 months into the poly experiment) it has gone pretty well, maybe 66th percentile of my expectations? I’ve had a few emotional moments, but nothing that I couldn’t handle. I’ve grown quite a bit as a communicator. I think my relationship with my partner is stronger than it was, I’ve done some dating, and have developed other personal relationships more deeply.
Things that could be going better: I don’t find that I realistically have much energy for a lot of dating. I wish I had more. It feels a bit imbalanced; my partner is an attractive woman and lots of people want to go on dates with her, but it’s quite a bit more work for me and as a result I go on fewer dates. Also, I sometimes emotionally struggle in the moment when my partner goes on dates (but not always!) -- it helps to know that we’ll get a chance to talk about it afterwards, and it gives me a nice boost that she repeatedly chooses to keep me as her primary partner even as she dates a lot of other great people.
From a male member of the EA Bay Area / DC communities on his experience with polyamory: